Edit: Just finished this deck a week ago, and it works actually pretty nicely. Also did a few changes to make mana base and draw more reliable.

Edit: I just saw that someone else made a deck around the same combo as I a day before but in Golgari only. Why not show JackBort some love and check out his list as well? 

Good evening folks, Shdorsh here from Failure Guaranteed with another combo deck. Following the last Vesperlark deck debacle, I thought to myself to use a different loop. The thing is: Abzan Vespermalarky currently is not fast or consistent enough, so I thought of creating a different deck, which has more cards to run it off of.

Big props to my friend itsme_op, who streams a lot of MTGA, so make sure to check him out for extremely janky decks. While we don't have the wildcards for the entire deck, we will try to replicate the following loop as best as we can on stream tomorrow. We found this nice interaction between Hapatra, Vizer of Poisons and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician when I told him to splice her in his squirrel deck. Now I found something that might be even jankier than my last deck, so here we go.

The main combo

Yawgmoth and Hepatra sitting in a nest,
Trouser snakes spit their white glistening oil, you can probably figure out the rest.

How does this combo work? It is simple: Turn Yawgmoth, Thran Physician's first ability into an endless loop. From this on, we will try to win the game. For this, we have 3 slots basically in this combo:

• Slot 1: Yawgmoth, Thran Physician with his ability.
• Slot 2: Some way to get a creature onto the board off of his ability for the sacrifice.
• Slot 3: Some way to gain life off of his ability to counter the 1 life cost of it.

Slot 1 is already filled nicely, so we can move on with slot 2 right away.

Slot 2: Getting a creature to keep on using -1/-1

Amonkhet Remastered was a set that built the Golgari color pair green and black around -1/-1 counters. This set came with 2 extremely nice cards: Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and Nest of Scarabs. There were also creatures that came into play with -1/-1 counters, but that won't matter.

While a legendary (so you can only have one on your side of the battlefield any time), Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons creates nice 1/1 deathtouch snakes each time one or many -1/-1 counters are put on a creature. This can be extremely fun, since deathtouch is a nice defensive ability. We can't generate infinite tokens however by putting one or multiple -1/-1 counters on a creature: It will always just generate 1 token, even if you were to somehow put 2 -1/-1 counters on a creature. Since we need to sacrifice a creature for Yawgmoth, Thran Physician's ability and each snake has only 1 toughness, putting them on our snake tokens would make the sum of creatures gotten -1: We sacrifice a snake and we kill one. I know, you can target your opponent's creature to kill it, but it would have been nice if we had a way to overrun our opponent with creatures by targeting our very own instead without running Anointed Procession or Parallel Lives.

For combo consistency, I therefore chose another card that does the same thing and is an enchantment, so it is a bit harder to remove: Nest of Scarabs. It creates a bunch of 1/1 insect tokens (without deathtouch, so you know which one to sacrifice) and makes the deck more consistent with 8 cards that can fill in slot 2.

Slot 3: Gaining life

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician requires you to lose 1 life each time you use his ability. This would normally limit our combo to 20 usages if we meant to kill ourselves without getting hit by the opponent. So what are our options for gaining life?

• Gaining life on having a creature die or specifically sacrificing one. (From Yawgmoth's ability)
• Gaining life on putting a -1/-1 counter on an opponent's creature. (From Yawgmoth's ability)
• Gaining life from a creature entering the battlefield. (From Hapatra/Nest of Scarabs triggered by Yawgmoth's ability)

Now, there are many cards that do that, which makes it extremely consistent. Let me list you a few up:

On creature death

Surely after the Vespermalarky shenanigans, you probably know the answers by heart. Many vampire cards and others do exactly this and deal 1 damage, turning our loop deadly, even. This includes:

• Blood Artist, who doesn't need  white mana, but targets, hence can't move past hexproofed opponents with Shalai, Voice of Plenty and Leyline of Sanctity.
• Cruel Celebrant, who needs white mana but does not target.
• Bastion of Remembrance, which is an enchantment and costs a little more but does its job just as good as Cruel Celebrant.

There are other options, but I chose those because they seemed the cheapest mana-wise to me.

On -1/-1 counters

There is a single option if you really want to go with this. It is the Obelisk Spider. It is pretty nice that it generates -1/-1 counters on blocking as well, which gives some synergy with slot 2 and slot 1 even if you haven't completed the whole combo. It also has reach, which is the only way to screw over flyers.

On creature entering

Every MTGA neophyte and their grandmother probably heard of the mono-white lifegain deck, that gets verbally trashed by me for being probaby overrepresented and shows signs of unoriginality (you could at least netdeck something meme-y, yet working). And no, even in this writeup, I won't take those words back. I will borrow the more annoying cards from it, though, to make this an original deck.

With slot 1 and slot 2 filled, our combo starts generating a few 1/1 insects and deathtouch snakes. This means that we can win life off of creatures entering the battlefield. The best thing about it is that we get a creature and enchantment variety, which lets us work a tiny bit around removal and they only cost 1 mana.

• Soul Warden is and always has been ridiculous, feeding off of an opponent's creatures entering the battlefield and your own. It annoys the crap out of any creature loop that doesn't have removal built into it, like Vesperlark and Davriel's Withering or Orvar Hotel California, causing draws or even more unbearable trigger stack (although if you play the latter, you probably aim to make gameplay unbearable). This makes it a prime choice for filling out slot 3.
• Ajani's Welcome is also very nice, as it is an enchantment and gives you 1 life for each creature entering the battlefield under your control. While not feeding off of the opponent's creatures and not being a creature itself, it still is really good.

Both of these options mean that we can spend the first turn filling out the third slot of our combo.

Now there are other cards in here, just for one reason or another.

The rest of the deck

Vllage Rites

The Scurry Oak has a bit of a complex position in the deck. It is a token generator, as it makes 1/1 squirrels and as it gets +1/+1 counters and it gains them with evolve. If you take into consideration putting -1/-1 on your Scurry Oak, this can be very interesting: Get it down to 0/1, and with either creature token, 1/1 insect, 1/1 deathtouch snake or its very own 1/1 squirrels, it gains that +1/+1 counter, before nulifying the -1/-1 counter you just put on it and creating a new creature, ready to sacrifice. It is optimal as the perfect target to keep on doing this over and over!

I changed the protection bit from Snakeskin Veil for the draw fromVillage Rituals: Snakeskin Veil is good, but useless against sacrifice effects and effects that are applied on all creatures. As such, it is much better to make something out of the death of your creature and draw 2 more cards. This makes drawing your full combo easier and the deck a little bit more reliable.

Reliability of the combo

It seems like we have a very reliable set of cards. While slot 1 is only filled 4 times by Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and you might want to start out with him in your hand, you have slot 2 being filled out 8 times and slot 3 is filled out 18 times with a mixture of enchantments and creatures. This should make the deck quite a bit more reliable than the Vesperlark - Davriel's Withering pair.

The good part is that you can remove nearly anything that isn't hexproofed, shrouded or protected from black with this deck. Indestructible creatures like Toski, Bearer of Secrets, Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Brash Taunter will cry in front of this deck and if your opponent has his own Soul Warden to feed off of this loop, just kill her first.

Optimal starting hand

For a starting hand,I would recommend trying to get 1 Yawgmoth, Thran Physician in your hand. If not, some slot 2 fillers like Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and Nest of Scarabs might do the trick, though I heavily recommend filling slot 1, since we only got 4 pieces in the deck and drawing it is unreliable.

Even filling out slot 2 can be unreliable at times, causing some anxiety. Still you have a few Village Rites to keep you going, and don't forget that Indatha Triome has a cycling ability too, if you're in a pinch. Since there are so many enchantments and creatures for slot 1, I wouldn't worry about sacrificing a creature from that slot or not having it in my starting land.

Things that this deck doesn't like

Now there are things that this deck does not like. This loop can find problems in a few areas:

Lifegain prevention

Lifegain prevention can limit the times we use Yawgmoth, Thran Physician's ability. There are a few ways to do so, but I wouldn't be too scared about creatures like Rampaging Ferocidon or Quakebringer, as we can just kill them easily. Tibalt, Rakish Instigator and Roiling Vortex meanwhile will be very problematic. Besides, thank god Leyline of Punishment isn't in the game, although I would love to see mono-white lifegain people have to fight their way through that.

Counters prevention

Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider removes a counter from the opponent's counters that would be placed on another creature. Not only on the opponent's own creature but also the player controlling Vorinclex. This means Yawgmoth, Thran Physician's ability gets disrupted entirely. You might want to stock up the Ozolith to push through this and kill the Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider with 12 or more -1/-1 counters on the Ozolith, as it lets you put counters on opponent creatures. I'd go with 20 -1/-1 counters as rule 2 of Magic: The Gathering (the one after "read the card") is "Always make damn sure".

Solemnity is just a big "screw you" to this combo deck's entire scheme. So if someone plays Nine Lives, just don't even bother.

Heavy control

As with every combo deck, this one only pops off so long as you get your pieces on the board. It also requires your opponents to have creatures you can kill if you only got 1 instance of creature generation on the field. Therefore, if your opponent doesn't run any creatures you can loop off of, you are a bit screwed. Also, if your opponent just cares about destroying your stuff, you might want to have a Bastion of Remembrance instead of Obelisk Spider to circumvent the removal. Countering everything can be a pain, though and as usual, combo decks don't really like control decks.

Solemnity - Nine Lives based decks

Solemnity completely dsrupts the deck's flow (which is usually found with Nine Lives for a prison deck archetype). I have to say I am amazed nobody runs it with Sterling Grove, as it is a nice fetch and secures the combo nicely. Maybe put in some Luminous Broodmoth, but I digress.

Lifegain prevention can usually be dealt with, as Roiling Vortex deals damage to its own user as well and if you go enough slot 3 filled up, you can just overwhelm with creatures. Tibalt, Rakish Instigator would be a threat if it is kept safely, but most people use up its loyalty counters enough so that you can one hit it with a random creature you created. Creatures like Rampaging Ferrocidon and Quakebringer will take you some life, but you can destroy them with -1/-1 counters.

So long as you haven't filled out your slot 2 twice to gain 2 creatures on each instance of Yawgmoth's ability, you are reliant on your opponent's creatues. This makes a few well loved deck archetypes quite fun to play against:

Mono-white/Selesnya lifegain and Mono-white/Orzhov angels

While this deck can threaten with growing your opponent's life total by a lot, I found this to be pretty irrelevant: Once the combo is on the board, you can just play his ability as much as you need to survive. This lets you dig for cards of slot 2 (Cruel Celebrant, Blood Artist, Obelisk Spider), amplifying the damage on the next turn. Not only this, but you can draw further Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and Nest of Scarabs to swing with a ton of creatures. Self-mill is not a problem.

Elves

Elves can be ridiculously fast. Since they however don't gain life, there's some rather funny stuff that can happen: With enough Cruel Celebrant and Blood Artist, you can actually make them regret swinging in real hard, while your Soul Warden and Ajani's Welcome stalls the game for long enough with lifegain. Once they get pumped and have all the trample though, if you don't have the combo on board, it's game over.

Goblins

Same thing as with elves, but there's a little PSA I need to: The biggest threat one should remove first is Skirk Prospector, which people normally use for sacrificing their own goblins and quickly cheating Krenko, Mob Boss or Muxus, Goblin Grandee onto the board. The thing is that while you are targeting a goblin to put -1/-1 counters on it, the opponent always has the opportunity to sacrifice that goblin, disrupting the combo. This means you don't get to make an additional creature, which makes you sacrifice more creatures until the whole combo comes to a halt. Once that is dealt with however, it works rather nicely. The weird thing is that I have never seen any played sacrifice things I target with Skirk Prospector, which would have lost me the game a few times. I mean, come on red goblin players, I am not asking you to do a double backflip, just know your cards.

All in all

While this deck has its flaws, the inbuilt removal in this loop could potentially succeed a little bit more than the Vesperlark combo decks. As usual, no deck is without a flaw. 

The problem this deck can run into is that it requires you to play up to turn 4, where you lay down Yawgmoth, Thran Physician to start destroying your opponents' creatures. Problem with that is that if you opponent plays a fast enough deck and you are missing one of your pieces, you will lose 1 or more turns, which is crucial when fighting a fast deck like merfolks or goblins, but on a good enough draw, this deck can shred them.

The more I also test out all the combinations, the more I start to understand Jumpstart: Modern Horizon's real aim: Improving and enabling combo decks.

Anyway, test it out, let me hear what your story is with this deck as to prevent me from skimming reddit for hours to see what people are talking about. Also, make sure to check in tomorrow with my bro itsme_op, where we will give this loop a little testrun. That's pretty much it, I hope you had a wonderful time reading up this jank. Don't forget that you can always leave me a follow to read up more janky deck ideas and until then: Stay cool, stay fresh, and I'll see you next time!